The Digester

Chinese chatbot Doubao accused of enabling non-consensual pornographic deepfakes

Mar 20th 2026

A Chinese feminist collective says the popular ByteDance chatbot Doubao has been used to create non-consensual pornographic deepfakes of women, a claim that highlights gaps in China’s regulation of AI tools.

  • Grassroots group Free Nora reported that users exploited Doubao to generate non-consensual pornographic images of real women.
  • Free Nora called the campaign a large scale form of digital public shaming targeting ordinary women.
  • Doubao is owned by ByteDance and had about 155 million weekly active users as of late December, according to QuestMobile.
  • Competitor DeepSeek had about 81.6 million weekly active users in the same report.
  • ByteDance did not reply to the South China Morning Post's request for comment.
  • Free Nora says effective regulation against AI deepfake misuse remains limited in China.

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